Minister of Fire2.

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Wood pellets, manufactured to be burned more easily than logs in wood stoves and furnaces, were selling for as little as $220 a ton last summer. This year, with more customers seeking to shift at least some of their heating needs to wood, area dealers are quoting prices in the $255 to $290 range, according to the Web site www.hearth.com.

Seasoned Moderator2.

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Staff Member

Sales took off after hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. Homeowners snapped up stoves to soften the blow of soaring prices for heating oil, according to Craig Issod, publisher of Hearth.com, an online publication for the industry.

Harman Stove focused on pellet stoves, a niche in which sales nearly doubled between 2004 and 2006, Issod said.

"They put all their eggs in that basket," he said.

Harman Stove broke ground on a new manufacturing plant in 2006. The company was planning to more than double its then-workforce of 270 people.

But in 2007, sales plunged due to falling oil prices, a mild winter and rising costs for pellets. Nationwide, consumers last year bought roughly 54,000 pellet stoves, down from a peak of more than 133,000 in 2006, according to the Hearth, Patio and Barbecue Association, an industry trade group in Arlington, Va.

Harman Stove never built the new plant, but it did build a new warehouse.

Ironically, sales are booming again, given warnings that heating oil this winter could cost more than $4.50 a gallon.

"Harman right now is probably in the No. 1 position of any other manufacturer in the business," Issod said. "They are sold out of every decent appliance they have."